8 May 2020 — 0846 mdt

Dr. Annie Bukacek: annoying gadfly or poisoner of weak minds?

Near the end of a 52-year career, a registered nurse I knew crossed medical paths with a young physician, Annie Bukacek. Years later, after Bukacek made the news for her political activity, the nurse, now somewhere beyond the pearly gates, told me that Bukacek was “extremely kind to her patients.” A high compliment, that, for kindness heals.

But there’s another side to Annie Bukacek, one for which she’s much better known. A fierce combination of Ayn Rand libertarian and bomb throwing anarchist, she has no love for government and seizes every opportunity to shout out her views, which — and here I’ll be kind — are as close to being major league wackadoodle as one can get without actually foaming at the mouth.

She’s highly skeptical of vaccination, and has a long history of making her position crystal clear. And a month ago, at one of Chuck Baldwin’s religious gathering, wearing a lab coat and a pink stethoscope, she delivered a convoluted argument that the official death tally for the Covid-19 virus is far too high because Trump haters are putting the wrong cause of death on death certificates in order to make him look bad. It’s a half-baked argument; the official tally may understate the true number of lives the virus has taken.

None of this would be that interesting — her views are widely known and most people have formed an opinion on them — were she not a member of the Flathead City-County Board of Health. She was appointed to the position late last year by the Flathead County Commission.

In 2016, Bukacek wrote a letter to the editor supporting Patrica Holmquist’s candidacy for the county commission.

“Diversity of opinion” is a code phrase for “we wanted a health board member who would genuflect to land developers.”

Thus were the land developers and anti-vaxers thrown a bone, and Bukacek given a soapbox and bullhorn.

It was a bad appointment from the gitgo, made in haste to appease land developers who were riled that the incumbent board members, David Meyerowitz and Wayne Miller, took their jobs seriously instead of serving as blind clerks with rubber stamps, and I suspect, to pay off some political debts. Now Phil Mitchell, mortified by Bukacek’s conduct, admits that appointing her was a mistake.

Thus far, she’s taken some pretty outrageous positions at health board meeting. She ends up on the short end of 8–1 votes, which suggests she lacks the persuasive power to convert the other members to her point of view. She’s an embarrassment, but not a threat to policy.

It’s her off board adventures that have certain people and groups calling for her expulsion from the health board. Insofar as I can determine, she does not identify herself as a member of the health board when she speaks at gatherings such as Baldwin’s. Instead, wearing a lab coat and stethoscope, she presents herself as a physician, and does not mention that she’s on the board of health. She doesn’t need to: the news media or someone else will do that for her.

Which is the real reason some want her booted off the health board. Taking away her soapbox and bullhorn, returning her to her former status as an annoying gadfly, would reduce her audience and her authority, and diminish the possibility that she’s poisoning weak minds. These people fear that Bukacek’s ideas and arguments are more powerful than those of her critics, and lack confidence in their fellow citizens’ ability to identify and reject a line of bull when they hear or catch a whiff of it.

I have more faith in the good judgement of my fellow citizen than that. I’m confident that the reaction of the good people of the Flathead to gadflys such as Bukacek was best described by Omar Khayyam:

Let her speak. Deal with her ideas, arguments, and assertions, by countering them with better ideas, arguments, and assertions. Getting her booted off the health board, and perhaps stirring up enough hatred of her to run her out of town, is not an approach that does credit to the community.

Bukacek, incidentally, makes a fine boogeyman for organizations on the make for money. “Danger, friends. Annie Bukacek is a dangerous purveyor of misinformation who will corrupt minds if she isn’t stopped. We know how to stop her. Send us some money and we’ll send her packing.”

The people far more deserving of being sent packing are the three county commissioners who put her on the health board.